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NWA grant for Anouk de Koning and consortium for research on social resilience

A 5 million euros grant from the Dutch Research Agenda allows Anouk de Koning and co-applicants Femke Kaulingfreks and Maartje van der Woude to study social interventions in eight Dutch cities in an innovative and interdisciplinary way. This project is part of the interdisciplinary programme Social Citizenship and Migration.

In the last decades, governmental tasks have increasingly been delegated to the local level and the state has encouraged the self-reliance of citizens and their informal social support networks. These local actors are expected to work together to achieve social resilience in the face of various societal challenges. In the coming five years, the research project Social Work and the Art of Crafting Resilient Societies [Crafting Resilience] will examine the dilemmas and pitfalls of such collaborations between state actors and citizens, and suggest ways for them to become more effective, democratic and just. 

Combining social science with practice-based approaches

Leiden cultural anthropologist Anouk de Koning is the main applicant on paper, but she states that she wouldn’t be able to do this project without her 'partners in crime' Femke Kaulingfreks, Professor of Youth and Society (Inholland University of Applied Sciences) and Maartje van der Woude, Professor of Law and Society (Leiden University). They are joined by ten co-applicants. The entire research consortium consists of a multidisciplinary team of junior and senior researchers, and a wide range of policy actors and practitioners involved in crafting social resilience. By combining social science with practice-based approaches, the research project aims to build a scientific knowledge base for Dutch social work and to produce training and educational materials for social professionals and policymakers. 

Three research lines

The research project will be led by the three PIs, each responsible for a research line. The first line focuses on the governing relations produced in social resilience projects and will be led by Anouk de Koning. The second part will be led by Femke Kaulingfreks and focuses on the professional politics of social work. The last research line, led by Maartje van der Woude, investigates dilemmas and frictions inherent in social resilience approaches to security-related problems. Each research line will host two PhD students and a postdoctoral researcher. The project will start in September 2022.

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